What Could Possibly Go Wrong At A Festival?

[dr_pretentious]

Okay, festival-going folks, I need to collect potential incidents for the Sebastian novella. What are the weirdest, most high-stakes, most improbable, most hilarious and/or most dangerous things you’ve seen happen at a festival? What interesting disasters have you seen averted, or had a hand in averting? Please don’t use names or identifying details, because I don’t want to be party to accidentally upsetting, embarrassing, or libeling anyone. I just need some ingredients to zizz together in the Cuisinart of my fictioneering brain so I can make some story pesto. If in doubt, please respond privately.

Comments

[rednikki.livejournal.com]

A couple of these are things I was not physically present for but heard after the fact from reliable sources.

The culmination of the festival involves a wooden sculpture, which has fireworks inside, being burnt to the ground. Someone decides to bring a romantic partner into the sculpture, where the fireworks are stored, for some nooky. They fall asleep afterwards and wake up to find the trap door has been locked from the outside, and the burning is about to begin... (yes, they made it out OK.)

No one remembered to tie down the porta-potties. They're all knocked over in a windstorm. And yes, people are inside. (Also, tents being picked up by kites and flying off at 50MPH! The carports made with steel also flying off at 50MPH are potentially dangerous.)

A festivalgoer has created a big metal contraption that actually walks, at slow speeds (about 2 mph). They walk it about two miles away from the festival. And then it breaks down. It weighs three tons.

A wooden sculpture has a two-story wooden slide - people climb a ladder up one side to see the inside of the sculpture, and slide down the other. Unfortunately, no one has properly sanded the slide. And the first few people down were naked. EMTs had to deal with a lot of "anal splinters" that year.

There is a beautiful metal sculpture of a coyote, about two stories high. The head spins around. People sit on the head and spin it faster and faster for that Tilt-a-Whirl effect, forgetting the most important part of a Tilt-a-Whirl: centrifugal force exists! Several people break limbs after being flung off at high speed. (You'd think after it happened once people would learn their lesson, but noooooo...)

I have heard a MILLION stories about "we brought our tent but the tent poles are still at home!" It's worse when the tent poles are 3 states away.

Someone hangs themselves, committing suicide in the middle of the night, in the middle of an art exhibit. For several days people assume the corpse is a really well-done mannequin. (That one may be too grim - but it is an actual documented occurrence.)

The festival is known for temperatures that exceed 100 degrees. This year, there's a giant rainstorm just as the festival is opening...and temperatures drop down to 40 degrees Fahrenheit overnight (not "by" 40 degrees, but down to just above freezing). Festivalgoers wrap themselves in every piece of cloth they can find to stay warm!

Speaking of rain: it turns the festival surface to mud. Some bright young things decide that if they just spin the wheels of their cars hard enough they'll be able to get out of the mud. As you can imagine, this goes poorly. Once the wheels are in up to the center line they give it up as a bad job, figuring they'll get the car out of the mud tomorrow once it dries. Of course, once it dries it becomes...concrete, essentially. (This happened to pioneers crossing the Nevada desert in the 1800s, too, so it's not limited to modern machinery - a heavily loaded wagon will do.)

The quiet camp is sited directly next to the amplified-music camp. This goes about as well as you can expect.

Put all of the food in identical opaque unlabeled containers that can't be resealed after they're opened. Breakfast Roulette is an every-morning occurrence. Will it be oatmeal, or Beef Stroganoff?

Only bring one pair of shoes...and the sole falls off one shoe on the first day. Barefooting is not an option due to harsh conditions.

Someone decides to walk around naked. At noon. Without sunblock. I have never seen a penis that red and I cringed just looking at them.

At the end of the festival there's still one lonely tent set up in the middle of the festival grounds, with a car beside it and all the stuff still intact. People start worrying that someone died and it was unreported. A mass search ensues. Turns out the guy got drunk, couldn't find his tent and car, decided someone must have stolen it, and hitched a ride back to The World with someone he knew.

[thunderpigeon.livejournal.com]

Wow, that first one sounds like The Wicker Man as a sitcom episode.

[(Anonymous)]

Now I wish I could see a highlights reel of that imaginary sitcom. It would bring new meaning to, for instance, "To the Moon, Alice!"

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

I knew I'd get some good Burning Man stories! Of all the descriptions that could end with a sarcastic "what could go wrong," a giant burning sculpture with fireworks and an interior chamber is right at the top of the list.

We've seen some flying tents, but the steel carports sound kind of terrifying.

See below for more porta-potty hilarity.

I may never have the physical durability to go to Burning Man -- when people talk about the harsh desert environment, I listen -- but somebody needs to write a story in which the sculpture-vehicles have a car chase. For that matter, a video that consisted of nothing but a car chase, Burning Man style, would be an epic viral hit.

I had to google the hanging story. Wow.

Sunburn where the sun don't usually shine is a classic problem. The trick is coming up with something freshly comical to do with that.